improving government service delivery to minority ethnic ... - NCCRI

improving
government
service
delivery
to minority
ethnic groups
Chapter 5: Conference Discussions 140_141
Facilitator: Ronnie Fay
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In relation to terminology, the current language must be seen to be evolving and be open to discussion and
change because many minority ethnic groups are very aware of being targeted but targeted in a negative
sense and that perhaps the use of the word ‘positive action’ might be more positive and reflect the reality.
Nothing should be imposed on minority ethnic groups and maybe not all minority ethnic groups require
targeting, and it needs to be done in partnership and you need to have the participation of NGOs and
minority ethnic groups to represent their own issues, and they need to be resourced to do so. In terms of
new initiatives regarding targeted employment, these are very welcome initiatives in terms of recruitment but
we need to look at retention and progression for those individuals but also to be clear that those individuals
shouldn’t replace formal consultative mechanisms because there is a danger that within an institution
because you have a Traveller or a black person or Muslim that they may be used as the mechanism for
consultation and that’s not acceptable.
Successful targeted initiatives or models of good practice should be mainstreamed either through funding
or through incorporation into policy and that information on these should be widely circulated and that we
don’t have to reinvent the wheel within each of the three jurisdictions or across the three jurisdictions.
C. Benchmarking
Facilitator: Katy Radford
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In benchmarking there is a need to capture data and monitor the information that we are trying to get
together, and we need to consider the political context from which this data is being captured. That’s
particularly relevant perhaps in Northern Ireland one might suggest, but also if we look at the process of
how issues around immigration, can cause difficulties for individuals, that is key to the sensitivities around
capturing data.
There is a need for an explanation for individuals as to why data needs to be captured, why we need
disaggregated data, why we need to capture and monitor information. And as part of that process we felt
it was important to address this within the context of anti-racism training and how this could be brought to
bear on the process.
There is a need to ask government to work with communities in partnership and for government to resource
partnerships in pulling together information and data about the communities in which we’re existing.
Facilitator: Eleanor McKnight
Our points reflect very much what you heard from the first group on benchmarking. I don’t think we were able to
identify any examples of current benchmarking clearly that indicates that there is a lot of work to happen in this
area.
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The first point was around the collection of data and that that had to be integral to benchmarking obviously
in order to plan services accordingly and to be able to measure change more effectively. There was a need
to focus more on qualitative rather than just quantative data and also that we should be sharing existing
data more, that a lot of the time we’re looking at ways of collecting new data but there are some examples
of where fairly robust data has been collected and we need to look at ways of sharing that.
The second point is to ensure benchmarking is effective, capacity building should be integral to consultation
and community engagement. An example was given in Scotland where community reviewers were being
trained to actually measure progress in health boards in partnership with health providers.
The final point was around the need for continued discussion on how quality of outcomes are measured and
we did have a discussion around whether we should be measuring equality of outcome or equality of life
chances, and I think latter is something that in Northern Ireland in particular is looking at now.